


Pierrot Lunaire

by Noxifer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Do-Over, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23174512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxifer/pseuds/Noxifer
Summary: It always happened when she was nine. Always on the same day. The twenty-first of June, 1990. One moment she was sitting in her mother’s laboratory, watching her work while doodling in the margins of one of Mummy’s old journals. Mummy would laugh and walk over, asking her what she was doing. The next, the universe exploded.There are stories aplenty with one or more of the Golden Trio going back in time to help the war to a better outcome, as well as a couple with other side-characters doing the same. But what about Luna? Quirky, detached Luna, who from time to time makes comments about things she perhaps shouldn’t know, always claiming this creature or that told her about it or otherwise made it obvious. What if those moments didn’t come from just being observant or seeing invisible creatures? What if they came from knowledge she’d picked up in a previous reiteration of her life?This is a brief look into what the Second Voldemort War might have looked like with Luna Lovegood as a time-traveller.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Pierrot Lunaire

**Author's Note:**

> **Minor warning:** Pairings mentioned are both M/F, F/F and M/F/F. And the tense is a bit fluid between past, present and future.
> 
> I doubt this will grow beyond this oneshot: while I have vague ideas for how things might turn out, it's not nearly enough for a full story. Though I _might_ at some point write more oneshots that take place in the same universe, just for those vital scenes that spur further departure from canon HP. But either way, I'd love to see someone else doing their take on this idea—just make sure you tell me about it so I can read it ^_~ (Likewise if you've read a time-travelling Luna before :3)

It always happened when she was nine. Always on the same day. The twenty-first of June, 1990. One moment she was sitting in her mother’s laboratory, watching her work while doodling in the margins of one of Mummy’s old journals. Mummy would laugh and walk over, asking her what she was doing. The next, the universe exploded.

Every single time, it happened the same way. And every single time, her father would find her in a corner of the blasted laboratory, hugging her knees and crying, partly because her mother was dead and it was _her_ fault. It was her fault because it had _always_ been her fault. Or… No. It didn’t always happen the same way. She could remember, vaguely, the first time. That time, it hadn’t been the same. That time, when the explosion occurred, it was because of the containment spell Mummy had turned her back on breaking down, and she only survived because Mummy used her own body to protect her daughter. While it had still been because of her Mummy hadn’t paid attention, that didn’t mean she had done it. But after that first time, it was always her fault. Each time it happened, she killed her own mother, because Mummy had always died that day, and the universe was weakened. First because of the failed containment spell on the experiment, and the subsequent times because of her own magic spearheading into the breach-that-hadn’t-yet-happened.

Daddy always pulled her tightly, wetting her hair with his tears, and she always felt a little bit like a fraud for making him think they were both grieving for the same reason. But they weren’t. Because Luna wasn’t crying only for her mother. She was also crying for all the other people who had died over the years. All the people she’d lost, over and over again. Mummy, Daddy, Rolf, Draco, Neville, the Weasleys.

Harry and Ginny.

Oh, Merlin. She couldn’t lose them again. Not those two.

She’d cry hardest for those she’d lost the last time, because the memory of their deaths was still fresh, still not dulled by the passage of time. And Daddy would hug her tightly and tell her it would be alright, that Mummy wasn’t _gone_, only removed from what can be seen and felt. That she would still be watching over them, and that they’d meet her again once their own adventure was over. And except for the first time, Luna would hug Daddy back and tell him that she knew. That Mummy had told her that she’d always love them. He didn’t need to know that _that_ particular conversation had taken place in the in-between, in those brief moments of nothingness before the universe exploded again.

The next few days, she’d spend in bed recovering. Ostensibly because of the ‘magical accident’ Mummy’s experiment had caused, but really to give her time to assimilate the new memories she now had and interlacing them with her own reality. To add them to the sprawling web of probabilities and cross out the choices that had gone wrong last time. To make plans.

Five. Five paths her life had taken before. And maybe this time, everything would turn out right.

The first time, things had gone… badly. She’d been traumatised by her mother’s death, but relatively normal. She’d been smart, if a little quirky. She’d met Neville early her first year, and they’d become friends. They never had time to become more than that, because that summer _he_ came back. So many people died, including Neville, and when Hogwarts fell the Order had scrambled to collect all the children who’d be threatened by _him_, hiding them away. Over the next fifteen years, they had ended up fighting a guerrilla war while desperately trying to find a means to kill _him_. Too many people had died. She’d been twenty-nine by the time _he_ lay dead, and both the Magical and Muggle world had been forever changed by it all. There were too few of them left to convince the Muggles it had been some terrorist cell, and there’d been… repercussions. She’d been thirty-five by the time she’d figured out how to change it all, how to make it _better_. How to go back so she could make a difference.

The second time, she’d told Daddy, once her memories had settled. They’d gone on a trip, tried to get all those horcruxes before _he_ would have a chance at getting back. It hadn’t worked the way she’d hoped it would. Oh, to begin with it had. She’d nabbed Scabbers the next time she was over at the Weasleys’, visiting Ginny, and she and Daddy had taken her to Amelia Bones, who’d seen to it Sirius Black was freed. He’d taken Harry in immediately, saving him from those abusive Muggles. They got the locket, the diadem, and even the diary without problems. But then Daddy had been cursed by the ring and died. She’d tried to hide that fact—because really, she could take care of herself—but had been caught in her lie and taken in by Sirius, probably as thanks for getting him freed, even if he never said so. Two years later, she and Harry were together. Long story short, it took _years_ before she could figure out how to get hold of the remaining horcruxes, by which time _he_ had managed to come back through a nasty ritual that killed half of his Death Eaters. But then _he_ died again before they could deal with the last horcrux, the one inside Harry. Harry was taken over, and things went even worse than the first time.

The third time, she held her tongue. She began to invent various invisible, magical creatures, to explain away how she knew things before they happened. She tried to suggest things to people to push them away from choices and actions she knew would turn out badly. She didn’t try to help Sirius escape that time, but when he escaped from Azkaban and the dementors were sent after him, she saw no other choice. It didn’t change things much. _He_ came back during the tri-wizard tournament her sixth year. This time it didn’t cost _him_ as much, but it cost the Light so much more. It cost them Harry. Ginny broke down the first time _he_ appeared with her boyfriend next to him, green eyes staring dully and unseeing, body moving slowly and mindlessly according to his master’s commands. It took Luna months to get her responsive again, but she refused to give up. One friend as an inferius was enough. By the time they got all the horcruxes, she and Ginny were more than friends, but they were the only ones remaining of both their families.

The fourth time she’d left Wormtail alone, and apart from secretly providing a few extra clues here and there she’d stayed away as much as she could from the friends she remembered and missed all too well. She was alone and bullied, too strange to stand, and she missed them all so badly. _He_ came back her third year, again through the tournament, and this time a Hufflepuff died. That pulled her out a little from her isolation, because they’d need her, and she got together with them on the train that September. But she messed up. Dumbledore had managed to get himself cursed by the same ring that had killed Daddy, two lifetimes ago, and it got worse. The pink toad hurt _Ginny_, and Luna lost her temper. Umbridge died, and Luna was sent to Azkaban, not to get out until _he_ broke his Death Eaters out the next year. Luna joined them, pretending to be on their side, and took them down from within, but not in time. Not in time to save Ginny and not in time to save Harry. She and Draco consoled each other for a time, but they never became more than friends. They were both far too damaged for that.

Last time… Last time she kept her temper, but Dumbledore still died. She’d sent him a message, warning him about the ring, but either he didn’t consider it trustworthy or he failed to prepare himself well enough. She kept her temper around Umbridge, thankfully, but that only meant she was taken when she tried to protect Ginny the next year. That time she was imprisoned at Malfoy Manor, thankfully. She preferred Death Eaters to dementors any day. She was rescued eventually, and started slipping hints to Snape and Dumbledore about the horcruxes. The Golden Trio eventually got them all, and _he_ died. The cost was… less than some other times, but still too much. Harry and Ginny got together, neither of them knowing her well enough to realise she loved them both. She found Rolf, and while they never had the passion she’d known with either Harry or Ginny, they had friendship and they both loved their children. It was enough for a time, but each year they held the memorial at Hogwarts, her heart ached more and more. In the end, she couldn’t take it anymore.

This time. This time she’ll try better. She’ll make sure she stays friends with Ginny, maybe even convince her to stop idolising Harry quite as much. She’ll try to stop her from getting hurt by the diary, and she’ll stop hiding from her former friends. She’ll tone down the creatures, of course, because that left her too much of an outcast. Maybe skip them entirely and claim to have visions instead? Trelawney would hate that. She’ll try to warn Dumbledore in a better way this time, too. And no matter how things will turn out this time, she’ll make sure to get close to both Harry and Ginny. They can all be together, and James, Albus and Lily can be joined by Lorcan and Lysander. Maybe this time they’ll have green eyes instead of blue. Maybe this time she won’t have to start over again.

**Author's Note:**

> A note on my choice of title:  
In a familiar dichotomy of the Symbolists, _Pierrot lunaire_ occupies a divided space: a public realm, over which the sun presides, and a private realm, dominated by the moon. The waking, sunlit world, populated by Pierrot's Commedia dell'Arte companions, is marked by deformity, degeneracy, avarice, and lust. Its inhabitants live under a sky swarming with "sinister black butterflies" that "seek blood to drink", having "extinguished the sun's glory" with their wings. Pierrot is of the dreaming, moonlit world. His is an enchanted interior space, in which sequestered violins are caressed by moonbeams, thereby setting their souls, "full of silence and harmony", thrumming. He lives there as an aloof isolato, encountering in a "sparkling polar icicle" a "Pierrot in disguise" and seeking, "all along the Lethe", not Columbine the fickle woman but her ethereal floral namesakes—"pale flowers of moonbeams/Like roses of light".
> 
> That's just a tiny part of it, of course, but there are plenty of things in that from which I can draw parallels to HP. The public realm, with its politicians and corruption, living under the threat of sinister Death Eaters. And the dreaming world, which in HP seems to mostly be inhabited by the Lovegoods ^^; And the description of Harlequin as an "artificial serpent" whose "essential goal" is "falsehood and deceit"? Well. There are plenty of people in HP _that_ could represent. (His multi-coloured costume, however, immediately makes me think of Dumbledore, but that might just be me :p)
> 
> And, of course, the title is also a play on Luna's name xD


End file.
